The Easy Life by Marguerite Duras

The Easy Life by Marguerite Duras

For the first time in English, literary icon Marguerite Duras's foundational masterpiece about a young woman's existential breakdown in the deceptively peaceful French countryside.

The Easy Life is the story of Francine Veyrenattes, a twenty-five-year-old woman who already feels like life is passing her by. After witnessing a series of tragedies on her family farm, she alternates between intense grief and staggering boredom as she discovers a curious detachment in herself, an inability to navigate the world as others do. Hoping to be cleansed of whatever ails her, she travels to the coast to visit the sea. But there she finds herself unraveling, uncertain of what is inside her. Lying in the sun with her toes in the sand by day while psychologically dissolving in her hotel room by night, she soon reaches the peak of her inner crisis and must grapple with whether and how she can take hold of her own existence.

An extraordinary examination of a young woman's estrangement from the world that only Marguerite Duras could have written, The Easy Life is a work of unsettling beauty and insight, and a bold, spellbinding journey into the depths of the human heart.

Marguerite Duras was one of Europe's most distinguished authors. She is best recognized outside of France for her filmscript Hiroshima Mon Amour and her Prix Goncourt-winning novel THE LOVER, which was also adapted into a film. LA DOLEUR, BLUE EYES BLACK HAIR, SUMMER RAIN, and THE NORTH CHINA LOVER are among her other works. Marguerite Duras was born in Indochina in 1914 and died in 1996.